Resurfacing: Shipwrecks in Art, History, and Archaeology.

Organisers: Dr Caspar Pearson (The Warburg Institute), Dr Johannes von Müller (Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel), Andrew Choong Han Lin and Dr Imogen Tedbury (The Royal Museums Greenwich)

What meaning does the figure of the shipwreck hold for art history, archaeology and related disciplines? Are the vessels lost at sea merely shattered cabinets of forgotten wonders that are now resurfacing? Or does the interest in them which art historians and archaeologists share with maritime historians, literary scholars and artists hold the potential to recalibrate an understanding of the knowledge produced in confrontation with material objects of both past and diverse aesthetics? And how do questions such as these resonate in times in which the dangers of the voyage by sea are very real and not metaphorical at all for hundreds of thousands who try to cross the bodies of water separating the Global South from the Global North?
This interdisciplinary two-day conference, held on 11 and 12 November 2022 in London at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the Warburg Institute, sets out to discuss these questions by assessing material histories of the shipwreck as well as the shipwreck within a history of ideas; a particular emphasis lies on the politics around the shipwreck, and, last but not least, its reception, discussion and representation in art, both historic and present.

11 November 2022 (at the National Maritime Museum)

9:30 - Registration and coffee
10:00 - Welcome and introductory remarks

MATERIAL HISTORY
10:30 - Keynote: Elsje van Kessel (University of St Andrews) – "Losses that bring grief to stones". The Carreira da Índia and the shipwreck of things
11:45 - Break
11:30 - Jeremy Michell (Royal Museums Greenwich) – The Gibson Collection
12:15 - Kelly Presutti (Cornell University, US) – Agglomerations and Obelisks: Material Histories of a Shipwreck in France and New Caledonia
13:00 - Discussion
13:15 - Lunch (not provided)

HISTORY OF IDEAS
14:15 - Keynote: Marcia Pointon (University of Manchester) – The involved spectator and the shipwreck in early nineteenth-century England
15:00 - Johannes von Müller (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel) – A world gone shipwreck: The ghostly presence of a colonial history in Aby Warburg's Picture Atlas
15:45 - Break
16:00 - Jonathan Rayner (University of Sheffield) – World War II History, Imperial Navy Shipwrecks and Japanese Cinema
16:45 - Till Julian Huss (University of Europe for Applied Sciences, Berlin) – The Metaphorics of Shipwreck: An Inquiry into an Art-Historical Metaphorology in the Wake of Hans Blumenberg
17:30 - Discussion

12 November 2022 (The Warburg Institute)

9:30 - Coffee
10:00 - Welcome to the Warburg Institute

POLITICS
10:15 - Keynote: Henning Trüper (Leibniz Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin) – Modern Moral Meanings in Shipwreck Imagery
11:00 - Sarah Rich (Coastal Carolina University, US) – What is there to do when you find an old Indian canoe? Anticolonialism in maritime archaeology
11:4 - Break
12:00 - Victor Claass (Institute national d’histoire de l’art, Paris) – Sunken Art, Drifting Empires
12:45 - Caecilie Weissert (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel) – Self-scuttling as a shipwreck
13:30 - Discussion
13:45 - Lunch (not provided)

ART
14:45 - Keynote: Michael Diers (HFBK Hamburg & Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) – BRIDGE THE GAP. Shipwreck in contemporary art
15:30 - Ben Pollitt (Courtauld Institute, London) – From Wreck Reef: Resurfacing Westall's Views of Australia
16:15 - Oliver O'Donnell (Warburg Institute, London) – Europe on the Docks: George Bellows in the National Gallery of Art, London
17:00 - Closing discussion

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For booking and further details: https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/resurfacing-shipwrecks-art-history-archaeology